In his state of the Union message on Thursday, President Carter has finally enunciated his long-term policy to meet the alleged Soviet challenge in the Gulf region. Beyond the measures he had announced in the wake of the Russian takeover in Afghanistan – cancellation of contracts for the supply of 17 million tons of foodgrains, withholding of credits and high technology, boycott of the Moscow Olympics, increase in defence expenditure, military and economic aid for Pakistan despite refusal to give up its nuclear ambitions and encouragement to the Chinese to step up assistance to Islamabad and Afghan insurgents – the US chief executive has made three additional points. He has said that any attempt on the part of the Soviet Union to seize control of the Gulf region will be resisted, if necessary by the use of military force, that he hopes to “shape a co-operative security framework” with countries which he has not named, and that he wants to begin registration of draft age youths in order to meet future mobilisation needs if they arise.
It is too early to say whether all this adds up to a coherent and viable doctrine. It is even more premature to assess whether the measures he has taken and proposed will hurt the Soviet Union sufficiently to persuade the Kremlin to modify its policy in a manner acceptable to the United States. This note of caution is necessary for a variety of reasons. The US remains the world’s most powerful country in both the economic and the military field. When it is aroused, as it is now, the Soviet Union has tended to respect its susceptibilities – the Berlin crisis in the ‘forties, the Korean War and partition of Vietnam in the ‘fifties, the confrontation over Cuba in the early ‘sixties and the Middle East in the ‘seventies’. It commits blunders but is able either to live with or live down the consequences. While, for example, it provoked Chinese intervention in Korea by crossing the 38th parallel, it was able to avert the takeover of South Korea by North Korea and China. Similarly, its mad adventurism in Indo-China for decades has not prevented it from befriending China. It continues to sell military hardware to Formosa as it develops a virtual anti-Soviet alliance with China.
It is, however, not necessary either to under-estimate the importance of the proposed increase in US military power and deployment around the Gulf or to concede that the Soviet Union is embarked on and is in a position to pursue an expansionist policy (both propositions are open to question) to make the point that success or failure of the US strategy will hinge above all on whether it can turn Islamic revivalism sweeping the region against the Soviet Union. The confidence of the pro-Western regimes in the area in the United States was badly shaken by its failure to come to the rescue of the Shah in 1978 and the spread of the impression that the power balance is steadily shifting in favour of the Soviet Union. President Carter’s proposed moves can perhaps help him overcome this problem to some extent. But these cannot resolve the basic issue arising out of the Islamic peoples’ search for cultural autonomy and self-respect. So far this sentiment has worked against the United Slates and regimes friendly to it.